


The State of Dreaming

by GallicGalaxy



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Billy Hope in general hits me right in the feels, Billy's Mother, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Marina & The Diamonds references, This father/son relationship hits me right in the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 08:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4998052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallicGalaxy/pseuds/GallicGalaxy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If only you knew, my dear, how I live my life in fear<br/>If only you knew, my dear, how I know my time is near..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The State of Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my smol son Billy Hope  
> I have been told that my versions of Outlast characters are quite different from the general ones and I am 100% certain that my interpretation of Billy Hope is kinda weird compared to how most people see him.  
> Also lots of references to Billy's mother and the fact that she's DEAD *loud sobbing*

Billy wasn't supposed to fall asleep down here. Technically speaking, he really wasn't supposed to be here at all.

Wernicke had been bound to a wheelchair for a long time, but the position Billy had managed to fall asleep in still amazed him. He was half-sitting, his knees slid out from under him as though he'd fallen asleep in a kneeling position. His head was resting delicately against the edge of Wernicke's wheelchair, and one of his pale, tender hands was perched on the same surface, serving as a reassurance that Wernicke was still there.

He was so pale, so soft-looking. Something very powerfully youthful lying latent within a shell of sickly deterioration. His fingers twitched a little, his eyes flickering back and forth beneath their lids. He was dreaming. Dreaming a disconnected, unrecorded dream, a silent little dream that he could have on his own.

Billy made a tiny, weak noise. It was almost like a whimper, stifled by his closed lips. It made him seem even weaker, more feeble, and for a moment Wernicke almost felt something. It was something like sympathy or worry, but he changed his focus back to Billy before he could spend too much time on nostalgia for emotions that had been drained out of him a long time ago, wrung out of him like water from an old towel.

“...a paisley tattoo on her right arm.” Billy muttered in his sleep, fiddling with his own fingers. He made a little laughing sound, a happy noise. He was always an active dreamer. He seemed so...awake. As if there was no distinction between dreams and waking thoughts.

Billy's breathing sped up, his chest fluttering irregularly like there was some sort of pressure on it that he couldn't escape. His fingers gave a wide spasm, eyes twitching behind their lids. His pleasant dream appeared to have changed.

He awoke without a start. His eyes just slid open, as if on command, as if he had set a timer in the back of his mind for when he should wake up.

“W...was I asleep?” He asked, concern spiking in his voice as he gently pulled himself away and looked around.

“Yes. I didn't want to wake you.”

“Well, you should have...they might worry. I didn't mean to fall asleep.” Billy murmured, shakily rising to his feet. “But I should have known I was dreaming.”

Wernicke was silent for a moment.

“What were you dreaming about?”

Billy cracked a pale, delicate grin. “A dog.” He whispered, sounding as though he was awed by the mere existence of dogs. He stared up at the brightness of the ceiling.

“What kind of dog?”

A silly question. But a soft, gentle question. A question that would humor childish sensibilities.

“A German Shepherd.” Billy half-giggled. He had this little noise that was not quite a laugh, more a way of saying something where his voice bounced up and down because real laughter always caught in his throat. “I always wanted a dog, but I never had one. We couldn't...” He trailed off slowly, his eyes hazy like he was still dreaming. “I remember the dream. I could control it. But...at one point, I started talking to the dog about Mom. I don't know why. I was sitting beside the dog, he didn't have a name, on a grassy hill. For some reason, my mother wasn't there...”

Billy toyed with his own thumbs, cocking his head very slightly, as though confused. Wondering why he couldn't even summon his mother into his dream. “But I was telling the dog about her.” He added. “About what she looked like...like...I was telling him just in case he found her.” He looked down at his hands, as white as the world around him, staring through his fingers at the floor. “I started telling him about each tattoo, all the ones I remember. About...a paisley tattoo she has, on her upper right arm. Sometimes I see it in the light, and I remember her.” He raised his hands as he spoke and moved them as though drawing the outline in the air. His hands shook a little.

Maybe that was why he'd started breathing so quickly. Maybe remembering his mother was what had changed the aura of his dream from white sunshine to fearful flutters of pain. He'd lost control, remembering her. The only memory of his that wasn't completely painful. Not what it should have been, but he had spent his time trying to coax love from her, and she was the only thing he had to cling to.

Or she had been.

“I miss her.” Billy sighed. Wernicke's withered, shallow heart fluttered. He was wondering whether or not Billy knew. As far as he knew, Billy had never been told. But maybe, maybe he knew. Somehow. He knew a lot of things he wasn't supposed to. Billy closed his eyes for a second before turning back to Wernicke. He smiled the moment their eyes connected. “But I have you now.” Billy giggled, his throat straining to produce true bursts of laughter.

Billy's existence was heartbreaking. He was so fragile, a pale porcelain doll that was frighteningly breakable but never ceased to move. He sat down and drew pictures of his mother's tattoos like he was in a trance. He bounded around like a rabbit, slept for moments, powered himself through the engine therapy. He had spent years and years chasing the back of his mother's head, pulling at her sleeve and begging for her to turn around and look at him when she could hardly bear it. It was no fault of his.

He wanted so desperately to be loved. Nearly everyone else turned their backs on the world they felt had turned its back on them, but certainly not William Hope.

Hope.

“Well, I should be going. They'll be missing me upstairs.” Billy said softly, his eyes still sparkling, like he knew a secret they didn't, that he was proud of. “I wasn't supposed to be down here this long!” He was twitching his fingers, aching to draw something. He'd drawn some pictures of his mother that upset the people in charge of the art program. Maybe it was because he so frequently portrayed her as a shifting mass of tattoos, the spaces between them opening into nothing but her bones.

In one, she was sitting in ¾ view, gazing off to the side and down, holding something in her hands that was never defined. It was perpetually an eraser smudge. Billy wasn't the type to get supremely frustrated when something didn't turn out; the permanent smudge in her cupped hands was more indicative of him having drawn a great number of things in that spot but not found anything that fit. He was very enthusiastic when he spoke to Wernicke of his drawings. He did those little air-drawing hand motions, his eyes shone like they never would have otherwise.

“Goodbye, Daddy.” Billy chuckled, finally turning away with a courteous, reluctant wave.

It sent chills up Wernicke's spine, the word. The thought that Billy had attached himself so wholly to a man who was no longer capable of mustering love from the scar that used to be a heart. A heart that had been metaphorically carved out of him decades ago.

It may as well have been guided cardiac arrest.

 


End file.
